Timelines
by Kedern
Summary: A man and a woman, strangers to each other, meet on a bench in a park of London. None of them knows then how similar their stories are.


**AN: Although I've watched all episodes of Primeval, I never really grasped Nick Cutter's character (funny enough, in France, the show is called "Nick Cutter et les Portes du Temps", in English, "Nick Cutter and the Timegates" (needless to say, I prefer ten times the English version over the French one)) but here, he was kinda THE MAN to write about, considering both Jo's and his stories. But my uneasiness with his character is the reason why this story is mostly from Jo's POV. (Jo rocks!)**

**So here you have two people who have lost someone close to them, one because of the theory of timelines, one because of experiments, the other because of anomalies with the same pattern of going in the past to come back to an alternate present. For the EUReKANS, Nick Cutter went to the Permian Era through a sort of timegate and upon going back to his own time, Claudia Brown had totally disappeared from everywhere (minds, records, etc.). Weeks (months?) later, he is introduced to a woman, spitting image of Claudia, whose name is Jenny Lewis, new PR for his center. She had led a different life from Claudia, which explains how she went from Home Office Official to PR. For the Primevalians, Jo went unwillingly back to 1947 with a kind of time bridge device with four friends, but they came back with another person, which changed tiny things in their "present", such as the fact she and her boyfriend never dated, and even quite hate each other.  
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**Er… English not my native language, and as pointed out by a moderator from a site I tried to give some info to, I'm making a lot of grammatical mistakes (among other things). Feel free to criticize (constructively!).**

**Disclaimer : I own neither Primeval nor EUReKA and their characters (and for Becker's fans out there, NO, I didn't pick General Mansfield's name because of the actor, but because he is an actual character on the EUReKA show. Sorry.)**

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><p><em>"Being head of GD's security definitely had its perks"<em>, Jo was thinking.

Here she was, in London, visiting a facility whose security system had been upgraded with the latest breakthrough from GD's laboratories. When General Mansfield had asked her to supervise its setting up in the Londonian area, she accepted without much hesitation, eager to get away from Zane, who was almost stalking her, hoping for some answers to his numerous questions.

After a few little missteps, the system had finally been upgraded to its full capacity, making this particular London firm enter a new era.

Not expected back before the morrow, Jo allowed herself some hours away from everything that could remind her of Eureka and GD, and particularly her new life. Her wandering brought her to a small park in the middle of the city, drowning her in sounds of children playing and heavy traffic. Sitting on a bench, she observed, somewhat enviously, the happy and united families, bringing back the question about her own future. Sighing, she reached in her back pocket, where she kept her wallet, and opened it to reveal a picture of her and Zane, from the old timeline. Ironically, now that she lost him, she could see a similar future for them both, bringing their child(ren) to the park and enjoying themselves for some free time. Hoping that nothing was blowing up at GD in the meantime of course.

"A former lover?" a thickly Scottish accented voice inquired, emanating from her right.

Lost in her thoughts, she hadn't seen a blonde man sitting right next to her, but not to close as not to invade her personal space.

"How could you know?" she asked back, berating herself for not seeing the man approaching despite her Special Forces training.

"You wouldn't have this expression for a current lover, and you two look so different the one from the other to be related, hence a former lover. Name's Nick Cutter by the way" he added, holding out his hand for her to shake.

"Jo Lupo" she replied, shaking the offered hand.

While knowing nothing about the man, she felt oddly safe around him, as if she could trust him, which was against everything she had been taught so far, learning as much as possible about the suspect, thanks to GD's powerful computers.

_"When you have no intel, always trust your guts"_ would say her father. Well, let's go with her father's philosophy.

"If you don't mind my asking, what happened?"

How could you tell a perfect stranger that, despite being a hardcore soldier relying only on herself, she had let herself being close to a man until he had proposed to her, and had the same day, without having time to give him an answer, been sucked into a wormhole defined by physics laws she was far from grasping, sent back to 1947, been back to her own time to see the two years she spent with that guy had never happened?

"Time has separated us" the raven haired woman replied mournfully, being as close to the truth as she could get.

"I understand the feeling" the blonde said, earning a raised eyebrow from the young woman.

He too reached into his pocket to retrieve his wallet and hold it out to Jo, showing a picture of a beautiful brown-haired woman.

"Her name is Claudia Brown. We've been…well, I'm not sure we can say involved at this stage. We were close. I went…on a trip. When I came home, she wasn't there anymore" he explained with sadness.

"She's beautiful" Jo said simply, knowing that all the '_sorry'_s in the world could not cut the sorrow of the Scot.

Nick took back the photograph.

"No matter how long it has been, I still hope…"

"…that everything will come back the way it was?" the former deputy supplied.

The Scot laughed bitterly.

"Same story I guess then."

"Yeah. Same story" Jo agreed softly, without knowing how much of their stories was similar. "We're told we can't go back in time" she added after a pause, "and tales warn us of the dangers of messing with it…"

"…but it doesn't keep us for wishing it all the same, and unmake was has been made, or make again what has been unmade" the blonde completed, surprising once again the woman by his accurate aim.

Silence settled.

"He had just proposed to me. I froze and he went away. Then I… was forced into a trip too. Somehow, I sometimes think that if I hadn't frozen, if I had said yes on the spot, I would still have him with me. Like a punishment. As if, after all, I didn't deserve to be with him because of my hesitation. As if…"

Jo Lupo was venting to a total stranger. Well, not a total stranger: a Scot having more or less the same story she had. Well, she highly doubted he had been sent in the forties and had come back to a different present but still, she could relate with the man with his lost woman and her losing _her_ Zane in the middle of the crisis.

At Eureka, everyone having been under the time travelling spell had found a way to improve their life back to the present. On the contrary, she had lost her about-to-be future fiancée, a partnership she loved, a job she was dedicated to (even if being head of GD's security was not something she was truly against) and to top it all, she had lost her house and all of her possessions thanks to Larry and his rocket. So yes, she was venting, but she was venting to a man who knew the pain of having a loved one lost sometime ; and not to people who, though they were her friends and only wanted the best for her, did not know about this kind of burden.

"She kissed me right before I went away. In front of my team and my wife. Well, my wife I thought was dead as she hadn't contacted me for eight years. So, more like my ex-wife. I think that was to piss her off. But it was as if she knew she wouldn't be there when I'd be coming back. Though nothing was predicting it."

"As if it was a sign for us not to go."

Both were surprised with the similarities between their stories and their feelings. Two people, living miles away the one from the other, not able to find some sort of comfort with their close ones but only with themselves, 'sharer' of the same grief. Two people, not aware of the deeper meaning of the other's words, nor of the fact their loss somehow happened during the same circumstances.

Time travels. Timelines. Old. New.

Both had to juggle with those terms and those meanings every hour of every day, unable to tell anyone, unable to set things right. Both had to see every minute a doppelganger of the ones they didn't want to be parted from. Neither had anyone around to understand the ache.

Jo's cell went off.

"I'm sorry. I should head back. Long way home" she explained, even though she was not looking forward to leave this person she knew she could trust and would understand what she was going through.

"The U.S.?"

"Oregon."

"Long way home indeed" the blonde nodded, estimating the distance. "I guess I won't see you around then" he added seeing the woman standing up.

"Not really" she agreed, Mansfield probably not going to allow her to travel that much given her responsibilities back at GD. "Good bye, then."

"Good bye. Have a safe trip back."

She nodded her thanks, before going back to the hotel to retrieve her baggage.

That day, both had been able to relieve a little the pain constricting their chest at each step they were taking in their new life, forced to leave behind their blossoming relationships, or about to blossom.

Ironically, they found solace in someone miles and miles away, a total stranger they probably would not meet ever again.

But they were thankful that, at least for a few moments, they had been able to confide in that someone with a story so close to their own, that they could pretend they were the same.

If only they knew.

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><p><strong>AN: Not that happy with the story. Well, I had the plot in mind for quite a time already, but I had some trouble went it came to more words than "Nick and Jo live the same thing".<strong>

**It is quite probable that I'll end up re-writing the whole thing.  
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